"Another Bed Redone....."

Yesterdays accomplishment was a raised bed which sits directly in front of the side door of the house and end of the driveway.  It must have been neglected for quite awhile because the grass in it was very thick and matted.  In the back left corner, there is a good sized Yucca plant.  Its not a particular favorite of mine, but it will stay.  The bed showed signs of a few Spring bulbs, too, but when I cleaned the grass out, they came with it.  This Fall I can plant bulbs and know exactly what is where.  ;)

I used a pitchfork to remove the "sod", for that is basically what the bed had become filled with over its period of neglect.  I saved as much of the "soil" as possible, which was very sandy, but it had been amended at some point because it was darker near the top compared to a few inches further down.

The bed "surround" is made up of long rectangular marble slabs.  After removing the sod and old leaves, I reconfigured a couple of the marble pieces near the Yucca plant and did not include it in the newly cleaned bed.

Next came the addition of peat moss and a bag of commercial compost.

At this point, I hadn't the plants I needed for the bed, so needed to go to Manitou Gardens (a WONDERFUL nursery up on S West-Bay Shore Drive, Traverse City), who had just what I wanted.

3 Beautiful Blueberry bushes found a home in this little bed.  I'm not sure how old the plants are, but they have fruit on them already.  I brought them home, added more peat moss and compost in the bottom of each hole I dug for them, and covered the bed with cedar mulch.  Of course, a thorough watering took place after that.  ;)  Hopefully, they will thrive and give us many years of tasty blueberries!